New SWCTN Data Prototype fellows

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New South West Creative Technology Network data prototype fellows announced

Friday, 11 December, 2020

The South West Creative Technology Network (SWCTN) project - of which Bath Spa University’s Centre for Cultural and Creative Industries (CCCI) is a lead partner - has announced its new cohort of Data Prototype fellows for 2020-21.

Made up of eight teams from across the South West, the cohort will deliver brave and distinctive new products and services, which challenge the status quo within their fields and bring new voices into the creative economy of the region.

The four-month programme is funded by Research England’s Connecting Capabilities Fund. Running between December 2020 and March 2021, the programme will offer the eight teams the chance to research and develop prototypes that fuse data and creative technologies to deliver original processes, experiences, products, services or platforms, with grants worth up to £40K each. As well as the grant, teams will receive expert production and business support, and be connected to professional and peer contacts in the arts, technology and academic sectors.

Meet the teams

 

Broken Circles by Dave Webb and Jon Somerscales

Broken Circles is a data visualisation and consumer empowerment tool that takes data on the true and hidden costs of materials, manufacture, usage, and end of life costs, to make more fully informed choices possible for consumers. 

Dave Webb from the Broken Circles prototype team recently graduated from Bath Spa University with an MSc in Creative Computing and is a resident at The Studio.

Clus by Joyann Boyce and the team at The Social Detail 

Clus is a prototype software which will highlight potential areas of bias in content. The objective is to identify all forms of bias in imagery and literature content using machine learning. 

Controlr by Tracey Bowen and team 

Controlr is a decentralised Data Union with a difference. The project seeks to redress the unequal power balance between data providers and big tech by enabling ordinary people to earn revenue from the data they produce. 

Data Cargo by Martin Howitt and the teams at The Data Place Ltd and Bikespace CIC

The Data Cargo project is part of a national pilot to trial electric cargo bikes speeding up and greening up local goods deliveries. Using sets of sensors that fit into each bike and capture a range of data as the bikes travel the city, collecting data that can inform many aspects of urban planning. 

In the Loop by Bethany Lyne and the team at Cornwall 365 

In the Loop aims to create better feedback loops between audiences and cultural organisations in a rural context. The prototype will enable the co-creation of meaningful stories of impact through a community centred approach. 

MindFlow by Dawn Melville and team 

MindFlow is a personalized wearable system designed to provide the user with calming, restorative audio and tactile experiences through an innovative use of their real-time physiological data. 

Pollenize by Matthew Elmes and team 

The focus of the Pollenize project is to gather environmental intelligence data to research and combat the drivers of insect decline and deliver public led rewilding solutions using the honeybee as a vehicle to green recovery. 

Vana by Jaya Chakrabarti and the team at Semantrica Ltd 

The afforestation-with-data app Vana aims to aggregate available data (including Land Registry, Companies House, WENP, the Forestry Commission and TISCreport) to identify corporate-owned land banked for the long-term, the current usage for the land and the overlaps from public bodies/environmental NGOs/groups. 

Jo Lansdowne, Executive Producer, Watershed said: “We are excited to welcome these teams into the SWCTN community. The ideas in this cohort consider the ways in which engaging deeply with data can address urgent issues of inclusion, climate breakdown and wellbeing. We know that prototyping during a pandemic will be challenging and we will be carefully supporting all our teams through the next few months and look forward to sharing their prototypes in our upcoming Data Showcase at the end of March 2021.” 

Jon Dovey, Director of SWCTN and UWE Professor of Screen Media said: “I’m delighted to welcome our new Prototype Fellows into SWCTN’s Year of Data. SWCTN is gaining traction as a strong network of creative technologists across the South West, and this cohort will again show that SWCTN is the home of exciting new creative technology business ideas.”